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Tristam and I Will Take This Path More Often!

Today’s manicure is another one in my set of birthday month manicures. It features polishes from two different companies. Emily de Molly is an indie company based out of Australia. The maker is going to be taking a break from polish making for a while soon because she is having a baby. So, it might be a little hard to track down her goodies for a while. A England is a polish company based in the UK. If you live in the UK, you’re a lucky duck and can buy directly from them. I’m lucky enough to have Nail Polish Canada around to hook me up with my A England fixes. The also carry Emily de Molly from time to time as well. The two beauties that I used are pictured above. The base colour for this manicure is Path Less Taken by Emily de Molly and Tristam by A England was used for my stamping. The bottles used by both of these companies are quite similar. I’ve come to really like the shape of these bottles. When I paint my nails, I tend to hold the bottle between my knees and find that the little square bottles stay nicely put there. The round bottles from other companies can feel a little precarious when I hold them that way. I still do it though! I fell in love with Path Less Taken as soon as I saw the bottle. The holo was so stunning and the beautiful light green just called to me. It was one of those colours that needed to go on my nails as soon as I saw it. I was so thankful when the application was a breeze. It was my first holographic polish from Emily de Molly. Previously, I had used some glitter polishes from the brand. Application was smooth and easy. I used two coats to get to opacity. I didn’t do any cleanup. I probably should have done a time bit though. I can see a few little specs on my cuticles in these pictures that I didn’t notice before taking them. Oh, that holo! It just sings! I find that, with lighter holographic polishes, the holo can be a little more subtle. That was not the case here. It didn’t have a negative effect on the wear time. By comparison, I have some lighter polishes from the halographic line from Color Club. Those don’t seem to love me much. I had chips on those on the first day. Path Less Taken looked perfect after one day of wear (when I decided to stamp on it) and the post stamping manicure lasted days after that. The plate that I chose to use for the stamping was MoYou Mother Nature 02. My plate above says “Landscape” as the collection. That’s because I bought it in the first round of sales and it was a mistake from the manufacturer. These plates retail for £4.99. So, they are on the pricier side of things. They’re all beautiful and so well etched though. My stamping is always fantastic when I use my MoYou plates. One thing I do like is that they ship worldwide and you there are a lot of discount codes floating around out there. When I bought my plates, I used a code for 20% off. A England polishes work really well for stamping because they are very opaque and not very runny. I wouldn’t say that they’re a tick polish. I would be more inclined to say that they’re just thick enough to get the job done. When you look for a regular polish to use in stamping opacity and thickness are the two things you look for. If it doesn’t meet these standards, you’ll have issues picking it up onto the stamper and transferring it onto the nails. A England polishes work well because they’re very very very close to being opaque in one coat if not making it. It depends on the specific polish in their line. You can see how well Tristam played with my MoYou plate. It’s as though they knew that they were both from England! Tristam is a lovely deep blue holographic polish. The holo in Tristam is what led me to choose it for stamping on Path Less Taken. I love that you can see the holo throughout. If I was to use a stamping polish in this look, it wouldn’t be as seamless as it is. This photo was taken using my daylight bulb. The holo was even more fantastic when I was able to see it in the sunlight. Sadly, I never happened to have my camera in tow then and I’m really trying to break the habit of using my iPhone as a camera. I find that my Canon does a much better job at capturing the colours and I want to be as true to life here as possible.